Conical Paint"balls"?

[Koosh]

Just wondering... Everyone gripes that the round projectile of a paintball makes a lousy aerodynamic profile. Would a conical paintball work at all? or would it just tumble end over end after it left the barrel?

(Yes I know it will never happen with the loaders the way they are, and the amount of funds it would take to change over EVERY gun/loader/paintball production facility, but I just want to know if it would work...)

[SlartyBartFast]

Look and the Non-Leathal weapon system at www.fnhusa.com

Developped with AGD, your question has been answered.

[pblunchbox]

I wonder if those are tourney legal... imagine playing back with one of those bad boys.
FLAT trajectory, and awesome range.
They even shoot at 300fps or under.
*GASP* i need.
Lbx

[Blennidae]

Does anyone remember ads in paintball mags a long time ago for "sniperballs". They had 4 fins on the back and you had to load them one at a time in the barrel. Looked kinda like a blimp in the ads.

Never saw any in real life, but remember the ads.

[MINIMAG4LIFE]

super glue a paintball to the top of a 20 gauge shot gun wad. works pretty good and shotgun wads are cheap

[MINIMAG4LIFE]

20

[Coaster]

what is the maximum weight of a paintball?

[Top Secret]

Originally posted by MINIMAG4LIFE
super glue a paintball to the top of a 20 gauge shot gun wad. works pretty good and shotgun wads are cheap

I think we need break-action double barrel paintball guns for those. :D

[bjjb99]

Originally posted by Coaster
what is the maximum weight of a paintball?

I don't know if there is a "maximum allowable weight" for a paintball. Theoretically someone could fill a paintball with a very dense liquid (mercury, anyone?) and end up with something really heavy.

In practice, the average mass of a paintball is around 3 grams, or about one tenth of one ounce. You get about 160 paintballs to the pound (weight, not sterling *g*).

BJJB

[flanders]

a non spherical will nerv work with a mass load system such as a hopper

reasons-
1) the ball will never drop the same way every time, yeilding an off pointing cone which yeilds brakes

2) bolt discharge is not at a centrat point causing off motion

3) conictle bullets won't spin left to right or vise versy they will spin front to back or vise versa

[Coaster]

hmm... there must be a max weight, otherwise this would be legal : http://www.fnhusa.com/contents/ll_303.htm

The added weight and the ability to effictively rifle it, which would improve accuracy, would be awesome.

[bjjb99]

I know of no manufacturing regulation limiting the mass of a paintball. Perhaps the goggle/mask manufacturers use an implied limit during testing ("this mask will withstand impacts from 4 gram projectiles at 300 fps", for example, knowing full well that paintballs have less mass than 4 grams).

Redkey has measured the masses of various brands of paintballs and has provided a table of his results at the following link:

http://www.cnw.com/~pavlov/ballweights.jpg

As you can see, the average paintball is around 3.0 to 3.1 grams in mass.

The only true limit is the density of the fill and the volume of the paintball. In theory I suppose one could fire a paintball shell filled with solid osmium, but I doubt anyone would like to be struck by a 61 gram (2.1 ounce) projectile moving at paintball velocities.

BJJB

[MasterYoda]

A sphere is actually one of the lower drag aerodynamic surfaces. The majority of drag on the sphere is created by the area of defficient momentum created after the flow separates from the surface. This can be corrected by stretching the rear of the sphere (streamlining), which delays the separation of flow. The result is a tear drop shape. One has to be careful because the longer you stretch the body of the projectile, the more skin friction the projectile will experience in flight. As with a conical design, this design would require some kind of device to make it fly true, such as fins.

[halB]

it would work, but it would have to be spun like a bullet to cancel out inequalities on the surface. and since it has a liquid core that would = suck

[pbpancho]

my team captain had a whole bunch of little fins you superglued on to balls, they were made out of gelatin too, he said he got them a long time ago, but they were very cool, we breechloaded them and they were extremely accurate.

[Pand0ra]

Originally posted by bjjb99


I don't know if there is a "maximum allowable weight" for a paintball. Theoretically someone could fill a paintball with a very dense liquid (mercury, anyone?) and end up with something really heavy.

In practice, the average mass of a paintball is around 3 grams, or about one tenth of one ounce. You get about 160 paintballs to the pound (weight, not sterling *g*).

BJJB

The maximum energy allowed (before the marquer is considered a weapon like a firearm) detemines the weight of the projectile. The velocity is also limited to some extend.

The "marker" displayed on the website shots well above the limits. In fact, it doesn't fall in the paintball category, but well in the firearms ones (at least this would be the case in belgium). It looks like a shot could easily knock-off someone, and break a mask.

@++